New US Student Loan Forgiveness Brings Total to $175 Billion for 5 Million People (cnn.com) 67
"Biden forgives more student loans," read Thursday's headline at CNBC.
While this time it was $4.5 billion in student debt for over 60,000 public service workers, "The Biden-Harris Administration has approved $175 billion in student debt relief for nearly 5 million borrowers through various actions," according to an announcement from the White House on Thursday. (So the average amount received by each of the 5 million students is $35,000.) CNN calculates this eliminates roughly 11% of all outstanding U.S. federal student loan debt.
This latest round of forgiveness fixed a loophole in a bipartisan program (passed during the Bush administration in 2007) called Public Service Loan Forgiveness: "For too long, the government failed to live up to its commitments, and only 7,000 people had ever received forgiveness under Public Service Loan Forgiveness before Vice President (Kamala) Harris and I took office," Biden said in a statement. "We vowed to fix that," he added... Thursday's announcement impacts about 60,000 borrowers who are now approved for approximately $4.5 billion in student debt relief under PSLF.
CNN points out the total $175 billion in forgiven student debt is more than under any other president — though it's still "less than half of the $430 billion that would've been canceled under the president's one-time forgiveness plan, which was struck down by the Supreme Court last year." The Biden administration has made it easier for about 572,000 permanently disabled borrowers to receive the debt relief to which they are entitled. It also has granted student loan forgiveness to more than 1.6 million borrowers who were defrauded by their college... The Biden administration is conducting a one-time recount of borrowers' past payments and making adjustments if they had been counted incorrectly, bringing many people closer to debt relief.
While this time it was $4.5 billion in student debt for over 60,000 public service workers, "The Biden-Harris Administration has approved $175 billion in student debt relief for nearly 5 million borrowers through various actions," according to an announcement from the White House on Thursday. (So the average amount received by each of the 5 million students is $35,000.) CNN calculates this eliminates roughly 11% of all outstanding U.S. federal student loan debt.
This latest round of forgiveness fixed a loophole in a bipartisan program (passed during the Bush administration in 2007) called Public Service Loan Forgiveness: "For too long, the government failed to live up to its commitments, and only 7,000 people had ever received forgiveness under Public Service Loan Forgiveness before Vice President (Kamala) Harris and I took office," Biden said in a statement. "We vowed to fix that," he added... Thursday's announcement impacts about 60,000 borrowers who are now approved for approximately $4.5 billion in student debt relief under PSLF.
CNN points out the total $175 billion in forgiven student debt is more than under any other president — though it's still "less than half of the $430 billion that would've been canceled under the president's one-time forgiveness plan, which was struck down by the Supreme Court last year." The Biden administration has made it easier for about 572,000 permanently disabled borrowers to receive the debt relief to which they are entitled. It also has granted student loan forgiveness to more than 1.6 million borrowers who were defrauded by their college... The Biden administration is conducting a one-time recount of borrowers' past payments and making adjustments if they had been counted incorrectly, bringing many people closer to debt relief.
Taxing the poor to aid the rich (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Taxing the poor to aid the rich (Score:5, Insightful)
It's even more screwed up than that. They structured student loans as non-dischargeable debt, while also mixing in a mixture of grants, affirmative action, parental income ceilings, and other crap. Then you have the people who lived off of Ramen soup, worked their way through undergraduate and grad school, put off their lives for education, etc. who are going to be legitimately pissed because the message this kind of policy sends the subsequent generations is to spend like drunken sailors and vote money at the next election to the detriment of everybody else. That money comes from somewhere either as higher taxes or inflation when the government prints a bunch of money.
Then you have the people who already paid off their loans who are left out in the cold. Then you have the people who spent like drunken sailors anyway and are now complaining that they have to pay off the debt that they accumulated while bar hopping, taking vacations in Cancun, and narrowly getting a degree in Gender Studies or something equally economically useless.
This goes on and on, which is why it's such a phenomenally bad idea all around. The student loan system released the colleges to raise tuition rates while providing less value, while at the same time disincentivizing the students from using it for something productive. That's why you have secretarial positions that require a four year college degree for no good reason. They don't care what the degree is in, just that you have one. Now to buy votes the government is taxing everybody else (including those who were frugal, paid off their loans, or didn't go to college at all) to give a handout to some target demographic.
I got a useful degree that involved undergraduate, graduate, professional school, and post-graduate training. I worked my way through college, lived at home with the parents to save money, didn't travel, didn't vacation, and so on to keep the total loan down, then I paid it off. Now here come these entitled bozos who did the exact opposite, and the Biden administration gives them five figures. Where's my $35,000 handout?
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Re:Taxing the poor to aid the rich (Score:5, Interesting)
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It may be bitter, but it's not petty. Calling out enablers of bad behavior is appropriate and should be encouraged.
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...this kind of policy sends the subsequent generations is to spend like drunken sailors and vote money at the next election to the detriment of everybody else...
Or maybe it sends the message "we're starting to clue in that making education as easy to access as possible raises the value of our citizens/work-force, which benefits everybody."
I mean... sure, you can play the "I had to walk to school bare-foot, uphill, both ways so everyone else should too" card, or you can realize that all of the awesome stuff you have is because humanity as a whole has continued to claw its way out of ignorance.
Nixon's rubes. most of you. (Score:2)
Nixon's war on education continues on while his drug war slowly fades away. He may win the war... Putin and China likely aiding in the downfall.
In the 1960s, Americans placed a higher value on education making it a top political issue which resulted in the best educated generation in US history (boomers) but also made it into a political football from that point onward. The biggest threat was Equal Rights and Vietnam as the educated kids actually thought for themselves, making them dangerous and difficult t
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Correction, Nixon didn't start the war on democracy. That started immediately after WW2 when we didn't purge the Nazis among us. The Red Scare was probably the beginning of that war... Nothing gets a fascist more upset than a communist; it's one of the tell tale indicators (and the related conspiracy theories.) You could spot them right away when all the antifa hate began; that was a clear indicator. antifa is a dirty word now when it's just an idea and counter movement to fascism; they won WW2, the good g
Re: Taxing the poor to aid the rich (Score:2)
You're already getting it, via the government profits on the "entitled bozos" who are paying their loans. Did you do something to deserve their money? No?
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This loan shark business is a tax on the working class to aid the upper classes. Robbin Hood in reverse.
It's way more than just that. They want to destroy the Middle Class for everyone, leaving an uncrossable no-mans-land between the Working Class and them, and they especially want to keep non-white people -- in addition to women -- from getting ahead, acquiring wealth in any form (which very much includes owning property), and very much discouraging non-white people from having families. They couldn't care less if they're told that might mean America falls behind the rest of the world as an innovator, so lon
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The wealth-gap certainly has been increasing since the Reagan years (1980s) but I don't think you can blame student-loan forgiveness for it.
https://www.pewresearch.org/so... [pewresearch.org]
Education is an important factor for raising people up. I think we need to keep it accessible to all. If it gets too expensive, then it won't be.
Re: Taxing the poor to aid the rich (Score:2)
The profits from the federal student loan program are earmarked to subsidize the Affordable Care Act, private bankers have been pulled from the program... but you knew that, right?
Maybe not, AOC, the Economics Expert/Congresswoman from New York didn't know that when she tried grilling Bank Presidents about student loan profits...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]
Defrauded but still owe? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a little hazy on how you owe money when you were defrauded. Going to a college that made false promises means they lied and defrauded you. That's a crime. So I don't understand how the student (victim of fraud) would be on the hook and not the fraudulent university?
I'm not saying this is exactly what happened just that I don't understand how the victim is still held liable for the loan.
Otherwise, good for Biden/Harris for following through on a government program, Public Service Loan Forgiveness, since that was clearly passed and should be enforced.
Re:Defrauded but still owe? (Score:4, Informative)
Fair enough. Except those student loans are un-dischargeable. If you lose your job, career, family, house and you’re living in a cardboard box, and declare bankruptcy, those student loans stick to you like handcuffs. There’s basically no force in the universe that allows you to get out of them. Some people are truly trapped in debt because of them.
Except forgiving the loan DEFINITELY amounts to taxing poor uneducated people and transferring the wealth to people who are mostly educsted and middle-or-higher class. It’s messy.
Re: Defrauded but still owe? (Score:1)
You could get a regular loan for your student debt that you then are able to discharge in bankruptcy.
It is not a loan that you got, you got an advance tax return and you made the promise that you were going to spend it on a degree that had value (eg STEM field), if you went into the lesbian dance theory (too stupid to pass a STEM class and dropped your majors instead of cutting your losses and dropping out) that is your problem. If you get a government funding, you are expected to work to pay it back, other
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While I tend to be in favor of the government getting out of... just about everything, the argument for government being in this system is that if it were up to the banks, only people with good co-signers with great credit are going to be able to get loans for their kids, and only non-traditional students who've already worked for a while and built up their own credit are going t
Re: Defrauded but still owe? (Score:2)
And not forgiving the loan DEFINITELY amounts to taxing debt and transferring wealth.
Were you to run some actual numbers on, say, a set of parent loans for a kid that graduated this spring, you'd see you'd have to forgive more than half the current balance, right now, for the government to merely make a small amount of money instead of an amount that should be unconscionable as a tax on debt. Yes, tha
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That’s easy. The shady college can still afford more lawyers than you.
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What fraud did colleges commit? They offered the programs they chose and people willingly took them. Does any college promise a high paying job upon graduation? Of course not, they cannot make that promise. No, unfortunately the fraud is our culture that pushed kids into college. It was our teachers, our pare
Re: Defrauded but still owe? (Score:1)
Public school teachers are not the private colleges/universities. It is the pushing of the lie that higher education is necessary because it allows for continued welfare which translates in votes. Feel free to sue the DNC and your parents though.
Lies all round - but the students are accountable (Score:2)
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That excuse was tired 20 years ago, and it certainly hasn't applied over the last decade.
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The difference is that the children were lied to throughout their middle and high school years by their teachers desperate to give meaning to their own lives as to how without college they were worthless. And children are idiots because their brain structures governing mid term to long term decision making aren't properly formed until 18ish and 24ish respectively.
They paid more than the loan terms (Score:3)
Loan companies illegally lied and/or used pressure tactics to keep people paying
The $175bn is from that. It's loans that should have long since been forgiven. Typically much more than the principle has been paid. Often by a factor of 2 or 3.
We should be arresting the loan company owners but Biden has barely managed to get these illegal loans forgiven.
Re: Defrauded but still owe? (Score:2)
The words used to describe these activities is misleading.
The situation is the student borrowed money from the Gov't to buy coursework at a school.
If the school defrauded the student, the student could sue the school.
Imagine you borrowed money from a bank to buy a car, and it turns out you bought a lemon. You still owe the loan balance, you need to get your satisfaction from the dealer.
The loans being forgiven are not means-tested, they are not limited to students that were defrauded, and are a purely polit
Official act (Score:4, Insightful)
This is an “official act” and thanks to the supreme court it’s legal. The worst that can happen is an impeachment vote.
Re:Official act (Score:4, Insightful)
This corrupt SCOTUS can decide case by case whatever BS they like just like they did when they ruled the constitution was unconstitutional with some legal BS word games the idiot reporters can't grasp, even with professors as guests.
They will if they want find some exception; like in 2000 when they appointed Bush and then said their ruling was a once off non precedent setting ruling.
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No, if it's an "official act" then the Trump administration won't be able to criminally prosecute Biden and Harris for it.
On the other hand, each of the last five or so times they tried basically the same thing, courts told them it wasn't legal and they couldn't do it. When the same happens this time, there will be good argument that they will have known it wasn't legitimate and therefore couldn't be an official act.
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... I'm sorry, do you actually think that being an official act makes the cancellation valid or are you just purposefully being a disingenuous little shitweasel? I really can't tell. In any case it doesn't. What that decision you are referencing does do is protect Biden from being sued by people who did pay off their college loans or by people not covered under the conditions outlined, assuming any of them had standing which they almost certainly don't. The loans in question WILL be reinstated, assuming any
Re: Official act (Score:2)
You can't criminally prosecute an elected official when they pass illegal laws. That is established law that pre-dates the SCOTUS decision you complain about.
You really should read the decision, rather than key news readers or politicians running for office 'paraphrase it' for you.
vote (Score:1)
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vote for those who give you money
Elon Musk makes $100 offer to Pennsylvania voters to pledge to vote for Trump.
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vote for those who give you money
Elon Musk makes $100 offer to Pennsylvania voters to pledge to vote for Trump.
Which is a violation of election laws. Needless to say, this is not election interference [nbcnews.com] according to the convicted felon, so nothing will be done.
Hey! (Score:3, Insightful)
Erm (Score:4, Funny)
It's not really a "loan" if you don't have to pay it back.
Maybe we should call them "indoctrination sleepover camp stipends".
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These loans created money by fractional reserve though; they weren't loans of "actual" money, and discharging them simply undoes the money creation.
This type of loan discharge does not actually "cost" much in terms of the way people generally consider cost, and the benefit to society is arguably better than the cost it did incur.
Now, as for the harder to predict cost about, does this really incentivize people to just take out loans and hope they are forgiven, and the cost that incurs on society; I cannot sa
Money creation, not deletion (Score:2)
These loans created money by fractional reserve though; they weren't loans of "actual" money, and discharging them simply undoes the money creation.
No it does not because the money created is now in the hands of the university. A loan is a negative amount of money because it is owing. Deleting it is effectively the creation of even more money. It essentially increases the money supply because now people get to keep and spend the money they would otherwise be using to pay off the loan.
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I'm not sure what school of thought informed your theory of money, but it's wrong. Money is debt. If I perform a service for you and you give me money, it's because I didn't get anything in exchange for that service at time of service; the money represents the "debt" that I'm owed something in exchange for that service, at a future time.
Thus "destroying money" forgives the debt. Similarly, discharging debt (by repayment or by forgiveness) destroys money (because there is no claim on future exchange). Ag
Re: Erm (Score:2)
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How about all the politicians who were forgiven in their six and seven figure PPP loans? https://www.nbcnews.com/news/a... [nbcnews.com]
College was correlated to a middle income life (Score:4, Insightful)
The only value in the actual degree paper, for most degrees, is getting past HR. So instead of giving away 175B maybe we should change the hiring process. Ban asking for degrees, ban giving raises to government employees just because they have an additional couple letters to their title. Make HR actually screen for merit.
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God I'm sick of Alternate facts... (Score:1)
People I know who made it through college didn't "delay gratification", they had the government and/or their parents pay for them to go and maybe a nice paying and easy to do part time job.
The people I know who worked fast food, restaurant and other harder jobs in college all dropped out. Th
Don't matter! (Score:3)
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The government gravy train for all the grifters is coming to an end.
What are you talking about? The biggest grifter of all time is trying to get back in so he can grift off the taxpayers even more [citizensforethics.org] than he did the last time [yahoo.com].
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You talking about this guy? https://nymag.com/intelligence... [nymag.com]
Student loans are insane (Score:2)
All they do is prevent people from getting the qualification that would serve society best. It is no surprise the US still has to import a major portion of its academics. That is incredibly short-sighted.
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The US imports academics because they can, not because they need to. They get people with far more experience with research and as faculty if they import foreigners, anyone with the same level of experience is either already faculty or hopped to the private sector and not coming back.
Having people with the ability doesn't magically confer those people the 10 years of experience which Universities can find abroad.
here's a way this could be more palatable... (Score:5, Informative)
here's a way this could be more palatable...
Government takes over the debt, and lowers the interest rate to something closer to zero/or inflation... so only cost is managing it, while students pay the loans back, and not interest.
What is killing the students and the economy is that they are stuck paying upwards of 10K a year for loan repayment a year, only to have their principal drop by a few hundred bucks... anecdotal story of a woman that spent 10 years paying down the student debt and managed to pay 120K. on an 80K loan.. .with the principal dropping to a lovely 76K... I'd be hard pressed to find most people who can pay over 10K a year in debt repayment. Think of the benefit to the economy if that debt was paid off at cost... and the hundreds of billions of dollars being available to spend to drive the economy instead of funding bankers extravagance. This could be massive driver for economic growth.
With next steps being - letting the feds offer tuition assistance at a lower interest rate to those that qualify, with a crap ton of rules/caps to prevent abuse by maybe looking at the dozens of other countries that do this... and maybe states investing in their state schools...
There is not debt (Score:4, Informative)
The $175bn here are loans where the terms of the loan have already been satisfied and more interest than principle has been paid.
The loan companies were illegally collecting on a debt that the debtors either didn't know should be discharged or didn't have enough lawyers to do anything about.
As for you point about the gov't paying the debt, we just forgave around $3 trillion in small business loans during COVID, most of which went to large businesses who created small ones on paper to soak up the loan money.
So I say we just wipe out all the debt, tell the private equity vultures they should be glad their not in prison for what they did in 2008 and then go back the one good thing from the early 60s: tuition free college.
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Re: here's a way this could be more palatable... (Score:2)
Check, already happened years ago. Try to keep up.
Buying votes with taxpayer money (Score:1)
I am so glad that our government cannot unconstitutionally use taxpayer money to buy votes, and thereby insure a one party system.
Fun fact: college was free in the 60s (Score:2)
Ronald Reagan's people talked about the need to cut funding to keep the "bourgeoisie" (their word, not mine) under control. The YouTube Channel Some More News covered it about 2/3rds the way into their Reagan segment.
Bush Jr delt the final blow to federal funding for colleges resulting in the debt crisis we have today. I just finished getting my kid through college and if I take out the extra money I gave 'em so they didn't feel pressured to get a part time job it wa
Fun fact: rsilvergun is a serial liar (Score:2)
He doesn't provide any evidence for his assertions, and they are easily disproven [time.com]. What has changed a lot since the 1920s or 1950s is that (a) we send a lot more students to college than before but haven't increased the number or sizes of colleges nearly as much, (b) businesses use college degrees to help screen out unreliable workers because they're no longer allowed to use a lot of other methods like aptitude years, and (c) colleges now include a lot of additional benefits like fancy gyms, fancy food and
Ouch (Score:2)